


Bright, Ridiculous Things

by ineptshieldmaid



Series: The Patron Saint of Communicating Like A Fucking Adult [6]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: M/M, Polyamory, Threesome, uncharacteristically the author fades to black
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-26 21:44:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9923405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineptshieldmaid/pseuds/ineptshieldmaid
Summary: ‘You’re impossible,’ Yuri says, picking up a robe to wrap himself in. ‘I’ll get the 1989.’Minami watches him go, and then turns to find Viktor watching him watching.‘Ah,’ Minami says, and Viktor wonders for a second if he’s going to apologise. That’s happened before, and it always makes Viktor feel weird. He’s the one who commissions Yuri’s competition costumes, after all: how anyone could think he has a problem with other people checking out his husband, given that, is a mystery to him. Helikesit, likes knowing that other people want what he, Viktor, has got.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Me: That's it, I'm done with this series! I have no more loose threads to tie up. And I'm certainly not writing a fic for this series from Viktor's POV. The whole point has been outsider POV.  
> Also me: But what about Viktor/Yuri/Minami, though? WHAT ABOUT THAT.
> 
> Many thanks to saraaah for SPAG-checking this for me on short notice! 
> 
> Additional notes at the end

Viktor has always liked Minami. There are many factors to that - Minami’s generally sunny nature, his open and unashamed adoration of Yuri (Viktor is biased, and, as a default state, approves of people who adore Yuri), and, as he came up in the ranks, the way that Minami seemed to easily and naturally become the social glue between different sets of skaters. His friendship with Phichit had something to do with that, perhaps: between them, they poured water on hot arguments, made introductions, and convinced bitter rivals to go out clubbing together. And then, with apparent calm and aplomb, Minami had retired early and enrolled in culinary school.

Also, there’s the fact that Minami never seemed to be intimidated by Viktor. It’s like he used up all his hero-worship on Yuri, and as far as Minami is concerned, the most impressive thing Viktor has ever done is choreograph for Katsuki Yuri. Viktor has no problems with this assessment: he himself would probably nominate _marrying_ Yuri, but since that involved choreographing Yuri a routine good enough to win a World Championship against Viktor himself - and Yuri Plisetsky to boot - these are closely related functions.

Minami retired before Viktor did, with a respectable handful of medals to his name. He wasn’t injured and he didn’t have a breakdown, he just announced one day, at the press conference after Japanese Nationals, that this was his last season and he was planning to go to culinary school.

‘I want to learn something new,’ he’d said, when Yuri asked him about it. And as far as Viktor can tell, that’s really all there was to it: it wasn’t that Minami had realised he would never surpass either of the Yuris or JJ, or that he was burning to become a master chef, or any of that. He’d been skating all his life and he wanted something new. These days, he works for a perfectly nice restaurant in Fukuoka. They’ve been to eat there, Viktor and Yuri together: it was a good night out, and Viktor kept a tight lid on the part of himself that wanted to find it weird that someone would trade in a world-class sporting career for a perfectly nice restaurant - not even a Michelin starred kind of place, just a nice restaurant which has a way with local seafood.

Minami had insisted on bringing their plates out himself, and the head chef that night had let him concoct a dessert of his own devising in their honour. Viktor is reasonably certain it has now been named the Katsuki special or something of the sort, and is making plenty of money for the establishment.

Somehow, Minami ends up coming down to Hasetsu for a week in late spring, at the end of what they’ve decided is Yuri’s second-to-last season. Predictably, Minami ends up spending just as much time in Hiroko’s kitchen as he does with either Yuri or Viktor. Viktor thinks, as he gives up on any plans he may have had to cook anything at home for their guest, that it’s probably not a bad thing, Yuri spending more time with someone who’s so very happy with himself in his post-skating career. They still see Chris, of course (for some very interesting values of the verb _to see_ , too, and how did that ever become Viktor’s life?), but Chris never really stood a chance of getting out of the sport entirely. He’s teaching novices right now, but Lambiel’s put him in touch with some kid from Basel coming up through the junior ranks, and if Chris doesn’t end up with a star-studded coaching career, Viktor will eat… not his hat, Viktor hates hats. One of his own costumes, possibly.

That particular evening, they eat with the Katsukis. The table contains a peculiar mix of leftovers from the inn’s staple dishes, and whatever it is that Hiroko and Minami have been cooking up. Viktor thinks they might have been having an international cook-off: he recognises Nikolai Plisetsky’s pirozkhi’s, and there’s something with gnocchi that Viktor remembers Minami discovering in a downtown restaurant during Skate Canada one year, and dragging all the men’s competitors back to eat on their free day during the competition. JJ had accused Minami of trying to sabotage everyone else’s training diets, until Leo had pointed out that Minami had eaten twice as much of the stuff as any of them, so really, he was giving them an advantage.

Yuri, Minami and Viktor end up in the hot spring after dinner. Hiroko, who, as a general rule, expects anyone who cook in her kitchen to clean up their own mess _and_ hers, is unexpectedly benevolent toward Minami. She calls him Kenji-kun and shoos him outside to bask in the warm water and the warm spring night.

You’re not supposed to drink in the hot springs (or eat, or have sex - which is perfectly reasonable for a tourist establishment, and also a great trial to Viktor), but Yuri has home-town privileges. He climbs out, all long legs and wet skin glowing in the lamplight, asking Viktor as he goes,

‘Do you think champagne, or saké?’

Viktor never turns down an opportunity to get Yuri drinking champagne. It has _sentimental value_. He catches Minami checking Yuri out: the slightly awestruck expression he still has around Yuri has given way to frank appreciation. Well, Yuri is very attractive. Viktor finds himself feeling generous, and says to Yuri,

‘Bring up a bottle of the 1989?’ Viktor had invested in an entire pallet of the stuff, good-quality wine from the year Yuri was born. Hiroko and Toshiya keep it in their cellar, because Viktor had bought it as a wedding present, without even thinking about the fact that he and Yuri had nowhere in their apartment to store a pallet of champagne.

Yuri flushes faintly, as he does every time he’s reminded just how extravagantly Viktor loves him.

‘If you bring that out every time we have guests,’ he says, ‘it’ll be gone by the time I’m forty.’

‘You’re right,’ Viktor says. ‘I should buy another pallet. I think I should still be able to get our wedding year fairly cheaply, actually…’

‘You’re impossible,’ Yuri says, picking up a robe to wrap himself in. ‘I’ll get the 1989.’

Minami watches him go, and then turns to find Viktor watching him watching.

‘Ah,’ Minami says, and Viktor wonders for a second if he’s going to apologise. That’s happened before, and it always makes Viktor feel weird. He’s the one who commissions Yuri’s competition costumes, after all: how anyone could think he has a problem with other people checking out his husband, given that, is a mystery to him. He _likes_ it, likes knowing that other people want what he, Viktor, has got. 

Minami, to his credit, thinks better of the apology, and just nods at Viktor, slightly abashed. Viktor winks at him.

‘You’d think,’ Viktor says, ‘that the fact that I’m the one who has to drag that ass out of bed at the crack of dawn and badger him through training to keep it in shape would diminish the appeal, but…’ he tilts his head up to look at the sky, and spreads his arms out on the edge of the pool. ‘Nope. I could stare at it all day.’

Minami laughs, and relaxes back against the edge of the pool. ‘You’ll still be saying that when he’s forty and round as a mochi ball,’ he says.

‘Absolutely.’ 

The conversation cuts short when Yuri comes back with the champagne and glasses, but Minami smiles at Viktor as they clink glasses, and Viktor thinks they understand each other very well. 

Viktor tunes out for a while, staring up at the sky, while Yuri and Minami chatter in Japanese. It’s not that Viktor doesn’t understand: he’s been here long enough that he can follow basic social conversation, but he isn’t really necessary to this one.

He tunes back in when he hears Chris’ name.

‘Yes,’ Minami is saying, ‘Phichit _and_ Chris!’

‘Viktor,’ Yuri says, wide-eyed with delight, ‘how did we not know about this?’

‘I don’t keep track of everyone Chris sleeps with, you know that,’ Viktor says, although this does sound like a pretty great story. The real surprise is that Phichit didn’t call up Yuri immediately to gossip about it.

Minami shrugs, switches back to English. ‘This was years ago, now.’ Then he stops, and looks from Yuri to Viktor and back. ‘You did know about Chris and his…’

‘Open relationship,’ Yuri supplies. ‘Yes, we know about that.’

‘We know,’ Viktor says. ‘We _definitely_ know about that.’

Minami takes a moment to catch on, and then covers his mouth with his hand, looking gleeful. ‘You never!’

‘We so did,’ Yuri says, giggling right back at him. ‘Several times.’

Viktor wonders, not for the first time, how he ended up so in love with a man who has the gossiping habits of a teenage girl. He blames Minako; she led him astray in his youth.

Minami reaches across Yuri for the bottle, and pours them all another glass.

‘If only I could go back in time,’ he says, and Viktor raises an eyebrow at him. ‘Seventeen year-old me would not believe I’d end up with Viktor Nikiforov and _Katsuki Yuri_ -’ there it is again, the incredulous note falling on Yuri’s name, not Viktor’s - ‘telling me we’ve slept with the same people!’

‘We’ve never slept with Phichit,’ Viktor points out. ‘Or at least, I haven’t.’

Yuri snorts. ‘You know perfectly well I haven’t either.’

‘Well, if you want a recommendation,’ Minami says, snickering, ‘he’s worth the bother.’

‘I should hope so!’ Yuri says. ‘That’s my good friend we’re talking about!’

‘Why, are all your friends good to sleep with?’ Minami asks, wide-eyed and faux-innocent.

Yuri freezes for a moment, glass halfway to his mouth. He looks over Minami’s head to Viktor, who gives him what he hopes is an encouraging look. Or at least one that says Viktor is finding this whole situation hilarious.

‘I don’t know,’ Yuri says, putting the glass down. ‘I mean, _you’re_ my friend.’

Viktor is reasonably certain that 50% of the blush that threatens to overtake Minami is because Yuri just called him his friend. The remaining 50% is for the innuendo, of course, but the first half is utterly adorable.

‘I am…’ Minami giggles. ‘Am I supposed to say _yes, yes I am good in bed_ , here?’

‘You _can_ ,’ Viktor says, just about managing to keep a straight face. ‘But you might be asked to prove it.’

Minami looks at Viktor for a second, and then at Yuri, and back again. His eyes do their very best to bug out of his head, but he scrapes his composure back together fairly quickly. He swears something under his breath in Japanese, and holds his palms out open in front of him. 

‘Guys, if you’re offering…’

‘I think we are,’ Yuri says, and unlike Viktor, he’s not succeeding at keeping a straight face. ‘Are we, Viktor?’

‘You started it,’ Viktor says, pointing at him. ‘It’s your job to ask properly.’

‘I don’t think that’s actually a rule,’ Yuri says.

‘It is now.’

Minami is looking back and forth between them, like he’s watching a ping-pong match. At this, he cracks up laughing. ‘Are you like this every time?’ he asks. ‘How do you ever get laid at all?’

‘Sometimes we’re worse,’ Viktor says. The start of the thing with Chris was definitely worse. ‘And,’ he adds, for the sake of clarity. ‘We don’t actually do this all that often. The…’ he nods at Minami, ‘other people thing.’

‘Well,’ Yuri says, ‘we’re not doing this in my parent’s inn, regardless. Minami, come home with us?’

‘Yuri,’ Minami says, very solemn, ‘I’ve been staying in your apartment all week.’

There’s a pause where Yuri looks mortified and Viktor thinks about clarifying that Minami is welcome to come home with them regardless of whether he wants to have sex with them. Then Minami cracks up laughing and says,

‘Yes, yes, how is this even my life? Holy crap, yes, let’s go.’

They leave the remaining champagne with Mari, on the tacit understanding that she will, one, not tell her parents they’ve been drinking in the hot spring, and two, not mention any conclusions she may have drawn about why her brother and Minami are giggling like teenagers, elbowing each other and snickering behind Viktor’s back. Viktor’s doing a very good impersonation of a responsible adult, until Yuri wraps around him from behind and nips the skin at the back of his neck. 

‘I could have sworn I married a grown-up,’ Viktor gripes, turning around far enough to tuck Yuri under one of his arms, where he belongs.

‘Oh dear,’ Yuri says, eyes wide. ‘How could you have made that mistake?’ Then he giggles again. ‘It’s just I was too anxious to do ridiculous things on purpose, until you came along.’

‘Go home,’ Mari says, at precisely the same time as Minami says,

‘Who are you calling ridiculous things?’

Yuri and Minami collapse into giggles, again. Viktor, under Mari’s impassive gaze, feels himself blushing. This is terrible.

‘Go home,’ Mari says, again, ‘and be ridiculous _somewhere else_.’

The walk home almost sobers them up - they’re not drunk, not really, but Yuri and Minami seem to be high on the whole idea of each other. Viktor’s caught between trying to be the responsible one here, his own instinct that this will all somehow go wrong (aside from Chris, they’ve never _actually_ brought someone else home. It’s been less than a year since they started the thing with Chris, and when they started that they thought it was temporary), and the fact that Yuri’s giddiness is contagious to him. Still, by the time they get back to the apartment, everyone’s a bit calmer, and there’s the predictable long-drawn out moment where they all stand in the main room and stare at each other awkwardly.

This is Yuri’s show. Viktor is not going to be the one to start things. Minami is pretty damn cute, sure, but Viktor wouldn’t pick him up on his own account. This isn’t like Chris, who Viktor has loved, in some capacity, for most of his adult life; this time, Viktor’s in this for Yuri. Yuri, and the understanding he and Minami share, where Minami’s adoration of Yuri meets Viktor’s absolutely extravagant love and they find common ground. It’s funny how easily his mind has adapted: it’s been maybe seven months (the situation that never got off the ground with the Nishigoris doesn’t count) and these feel like perfectly natural reasons to go to bed with someone. 

Minami, being the enterprising young man he is, breaks the deadlock by stepping up and kissing Yuri. Yuri makes a faintly surprised noise, as if somehow this is an unexpected development, and then touches Minami’s face, his neck, his shoulders, before settling his hand in Minami’s bright-dyed hair and devoting his attention to kissing him properly. Viktor lets them get on with it: he’s got no objections to this view, not at all. He adores being kissed by Yuri, himself, of course he does, but he could also watch Yuri kiss other people for hours: admire the curve of his neck, the way he holds himself, the gentle certainty in the way he moves his hands - or, not so gentle, sometimes, at least with Chris; but that’s another matter. Right now he’s gentle with Minami; gentle, but not at all hesitant, and Minami is practically quivering by the time they pull apart.

They stand there, forehead to forehead, for a second, and then Minami giggles, bringing one hand up to touch Yuri’s cheek.

‘Um. Hi,’ Yuri says.

‘Hi,’ Minami agrees, and ducks back in to kiss him, quick and light. ‘It’s you!’ He kisses Yuri again, several teasing kisses in a row, until Yuri’s breath catches and one hand slips down to pull Minami against him by the waist. ‘It’s you!’ Minami says, again, and oh, fuck, this is completely and utterly adorable. Viktor gives up on disinterested observation and steps in closer to them, resting one hand on the small of Yuri’s back.

‘Who,’ Yuri says, a little dazed. ‘Who else would I be?’ He looks up at Viktor, as if hoping for an explanation. He really has no idea, Viktor realises. 

Viktor has long been used to the fact that Yuri can consistently surprise him. Sometimes he surprises Viktor with the depth of his love, or his dedication to the craft of their sport, or his unhesitating willingness to embrace - figuratively, and then literally - Viktor’s messed-up not-really-ex, to care about Chris because Viktor does, and to find ways to make it safe for Viktor to love him again too. 

And then sometimes Yuri, who still has a carefully stored collection of Viktor Nikiforov posters in his old room at the inn, surprises Viktor with his total and utter lack of self-awareness.

‘You,’ Minami repeats, and kisses Yuri again. Yuri makes a confused ‘mmph’ noise.

‘Don’t start being anyone else now,’ Viktor says. He brushes his knuckles over Yuri’s cheek, and exchanges a look with Minami, one that says yes, we both know he’s an idiot, but we both adore him anyway.

‘Can I kiss you, too?’ Minami asks. Up until this point, Viktor hasn’t been sure he’s up for this part, but Minami grins up at him with bright, laughing eyes, and suddenly it’s a great idea. He leans in and kisses Minami, feels Yuri’s breath on the back of his neck as he does, and finds himself smiling, laughing back at Minami when they pull apart.

Viktor smacks a kiss on Yuri’s cheek. Yuri swats him on the ass, affectionately. Minami leans up and smacks a kiss on Yuri’s _other_ cheek, and Viktor swats his ass in turn. 

‘What do you say we take this man to bed?’ Viktor says, to Minami, and Minami gives him a high-five. An honest to goodness high-five.

‘You _dorks_ ,’ Yuri says, and this time, when he and Minami dissolve into giggles, Viktor gives up, giggles with them, and drags the pair of them in the direction of the bedroom.

**Author's Note:**

> Ed 3.5.17 - tiny edits to the timeline to accommodate a sequel to HOBB/FA. Mention of exhibition skates taken out.
> 
> Same deal as usual, folks: as far as I know there's nothing risky in here, but I am not a wizard or a mind reader, so there's always a chance that your specific squick or trigger simply hasn't occurred to me and thus is not tagged. If that's not a risk you're willing to take, don't read in the first place.
> 
> I guess there's a bit of a power differential going on here, what with the hero-worship thing, but it's surely no greater between Minami and Yuri than between Yuri and Viktor, so. I figure if you're on board with the latter, the former should be okay.
> 
> I love comments, but please, be nice. You can ask me questions, but I am not here to be yelled at about characterisation choices you disagree with. I am *really* not here for objections that boil down to 'I wish you hadn't written these characters as poly'. There's plenty of nice monogamous fic out there, you're welcome to read that instead.


End file.
